SGI Dives Into Open-Source CFD Software

Count SGI in the bucket of venerable computer hardware companies (in this case, high-end graphics workstations) trying to remake themselves, with software playing a central role.

The company, a longtime technical computing leader often credited with putting 3D graphics workstations on the map, has purchased OpenCFD Ltd., which provides open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. OpenCFD has a large, very active user base that spans the commercial engineering, science, and public sector markets. The OpenFOAM CFD software comprises more than 80 solver and 170 utility applications. It's used for solving everything from complex fluid flows involving chemical reactions to turbulence and heat transfer problems and engineering challenges around solid dynamics and electromagnetics.

CFD is an important but still emerging segment of the computer-aided engineering and simulation segment, which is primarily dominated by a handful of small, lesser-known companies and ANSYS, the more well-known player in this space.

SGI sees CFD technology as the right fit for its focus on combining computing, storage, and third-party products into integrated technical computing platforms that can help customers solve tough problems. Software is becoming a bigger part of this equation, Franz Aman, SGI's chief marketing officer, said in an interview with Design News, and CFD software in particular is a compute-intense area, making it a perfect fit for SGI's approach.

"We are focused on technical computing, where compute-intense algorithms are used heavily," he told me. "We are not focused on running ERP and other applications that support a company's business. We are helping them do the things that are their business: envisioning the next-generation airplane, curing cancer, solving climate problems."

With the CFD market still in its infancy, SGI sees an opportunity to expand the market and encourage broader adoption, particularly in industries beyond manufacturing. In biosciences, for example, companies would leverage CFD tools to examine things like blood flow and climate conditions. Being able to provide tightly integrated software tools with high-performance computing hardware is one way to make CFD more accessible, Aman says, as is an open-source approach, which encourages partnerships with a wide community of contributors.

"Time to results -- this is what makes a huge difference at the end of the day," Aman says. "Having compute, storage, and software work well together has performance advantages -- in the CFD space, up to 35 percent -- but also makes sure customers have a complete system."

Given the collaborative nature of the open-source market, SGI sees OpenFOAM as complementary to packaged CFD tools like those from ANSYS. Because many CFD problems can't be solved with existing packages, or customers employ multiple solutions to get the right answer, open-source CFD will allow users to customize and extend the tool more like a development platform, he said. It can also be used in tandem with packaged offerings like ANSYS' CFD tools.

The entire OpenCFD team, including its leader, Henry Weller, has joined SGI. As part of the acquisition deal, SGI has established the OpenFOAM Foundation, a nonprofit organization that will work to oversee community contributions and ensure stability, structure, and resources for evolving the technology.

Users can get free downloads of OpenFOAM source code from the OpenFOAM Foundation. SGI will also offer a fee-based OpenFOAM support subscription and a fee-based OpenFOAM distribution, in addition to training and professional services.

I used SGI workstations some time back for doing 3D modeling for USN ship design at Newport News Shipbuilding. Their machines were impressive but the rise of commodity hardware CISC systems seems to have made the RISC based SGI machines less attractive.

The availability of high end graphics cards that can perform specialized processing that was originally developed for games to be utilized in other ways is a recent trend. Several of the distributed computing projects like SETI, the LHC and Einstein can make use of the graphics cards. I am curious if the Open source CFD makes use of any of these high end cards. I have 5 that are dedicated to specialized operations that will eventually be turned over to this kind of distributed processing to support some of the projects within BOINC.

Modern multicore cpu's are entirely outclassed in some compute intensive operations such as CFD by these new graphics cards that feature hundreds if not thousands of stream processors. The processors perform simple operations millions of times in parallel.

SGI will do well integrating this kind of hardware and software into a complete dedicated system. Such tools will greatly reduce the effort required to perform the necessary computations effectively and efficiently. The efficient part is significant since the proper utilization and tuning of the graphics cards can reduce the power inputs. I have the highest electric bill ever last month as a result of the power usage and cooling required for the computers.

Ivan, I assume you're talking about supporting GPUs like those from NVIDIA. While they didn't mention that in the FAQ or in subsequent interviews, a quick Google shows that there seems to be available plug-ins (remember, we're talking open source) that "support the execution of simulation on multi-gpu systems." I would think that and OpenFOAM's parallel processing capabilities could address some of those traditional CFD performance issues.

No doubt in my mind whatsoever that open source is the next big thing in CFD. We have used virtually every major brand of software: Fluent, Fidap, Nekton, Rampant, Adina, Cosmos, and so forth; yet we've almost exclusivley migrated to OpenFOAM. For so many reasons. Not the least of which being the price is hard to beat! But most importantly is the flexibility, and freedom to get your "hooks" into the code. Congratulations to SGI, you've bagged a winner!

Jim: Great perspective. I'm curious about the price issue you raise, though. From everything I've ever heard about open source software, the fact that's is "free" is somewhat of a misnomer. Most people say there are hidden costs around getting the support and resources, including folks who are comfortable getting their hands dirty with code. On the other hand, I guess people diving into CFD are the types that don't mind--more likely, relish--getting their hands dirty with code. Beyond cost, though, what other features/capabilties make OpenFOAM stand apart from the rest of the CFD pack?

I think people ONLY use OpenFOAM because of the cost. Single computer codes like Fluent cost $25k plus per year. CD- ADAPCO one of the leaders in automobile computing charges $10k per 100 hours on a multiprocessor machine.

I guess that's the tradeoff for the so-called "free" open source software. You remove the burden of paying costly licenses, but then you're obliged to invest in the training/people/resources to learn the environment, from the inside/out, and to contribute back to the community. The upside is there are many great resources and experts to tap in the community to learn the technology and get an edge on extending it. But again, that takes time, and in the engineering world, time is money.

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